


Work Through It

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Punisher (Comics)
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Blow Jobs, Desperation, Frank Castle is an Idiot, M/M, Masturbation, Sex Pollen adjacent, Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-23
Updated: 2020-04-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 07:08:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22869889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: Morbius suggested the Blood Stone might have odd effects on a human like Henry. This wasn't exactly what Frank thought he meant.
Relationships: Frank Castle/Henry Russo
Comments: 30
Kudos: 31





	1. Ready to Die

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inbox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inbox/gifts).



> I have a terrible memory and didn't feel like pulling my trade of the Frankencastle run out to work on this, so if I flub any obvious details about that era, just roll with it.

There's nothing about this monster bullshit that Frank's enjoyed so far. Picking a least favourite bit of what seems to be an constantly evolving event perfectly tailored to piss him off is pointless, and he's not exactly the sort to sit around and whine over his bad luck, even if every moment he's conscious for seems determined to find new and ever more uncomfortable experiences for him. 

Pressed, though, Frank's pretty sure his biggest complaint would always come back to the fundamental inability to make himself perfectly self-reliant. He can't take care of himself _by_ himself like this.

Before, there were the pills. Without Morbius's fucking pills, his brain might as well have been old oatmeal, and every time the pills wore off and his mind started to slip into the dark, his hands went stiff and clumsy. Reaction time slowed to uselessness, his fingers gone clumsy and slow, grip uncertain.

After almost dying a second time, he'd woken up once again whole and mobile, ready to get back to work, and no longer tethered to the pills. That helps -- not needing to dose himself just to be sure he could trust his brain to work helped, not being leashed to a schedule of popping pills just to carry a conversation or pull off a job, makes him feel a little less like he's going to lose his grip. 

He's got the Stone to thank for that, evidently. The Blood Stone, Morbius has explained, was a game changer when it came to reanimating or healing a body. It was buried in his chest, safe with him, slowly healing him.

Sure, fine. He was already three parts corpse and one part stripped car parts. Machine and meat all cobbled impossibly together into something huge and hulking. Every breath he took was an insult to the natural order, but sure. The magic rock in his chest was keeping him something like alive, and was making him more alive the longer it was with him, buried somewhere between his lungs, near his heart. 

Whatever.

If he has to, Frank can deal with the fucking magic, the unnatural bullshit, even the bit where he fucking died. He can deal with anything, so long as it doesn't get in the way of him doing what needs doing. He's got work to see done.

Problem being, brain pills or no brain pills, Blood Stone or no Blood Stone, Frank's hands as they are now are still so clumsy most of the time there's no way he can manage something as delicate as sewing an ear back on the side of his own head.

Which needs doing.

And since he can't do it himself, and since he didn't have time to sit around holding it in place and hoping that the 'slow healing' Morbius had talked about would include reattaching a severed part, he needed help. He needed someone with steady, nimble hands who could manage a passable blanket stitch without gagging about playing with dead tissue.

He needed Henry.

Frank doesn't like asking for help from anyone, but especially not from Henry. The kid's been through enough bullshit lately without Frank expecting nursing help from him. 

His options, however, are incredibly limited. He likes the idea of letting Morbius -- or anyone else, honestly -- touch him for any reason (whether they thought they were helping or healing or not) even less than he likes adding another layer to Henry's load.

At the very least, Henry is a known entity. The bounds of his loyalty and his expectations are well known. At the very most, Frank knows he can trust Henry far enough not to try overstepping or taking advantage of Frank asking for assistance.

Frank's trying to hold on to that knowledge. 

That he came looking for Henry to ask him for help. He came here with a perfectly normal request, and he was certainly not planning on any kind of creeping or... or anything like that. He didn't somehow _arrange_ for this to happen.

It's entirely accidental.

Henry's in the shower. Typical, really, these last few days -- seemed like Henry was taking a lot of showers since settling in to help Frank get back to work. Two or three times a day, it seemed like Henry rushed off to grab a shower, so when Frank had heard the running water he’d thought nothing of pushing open the bathroom door just enough to talk through it without being muffled or needing to shout. 

Except, with the door open, even short an ear, Frank can hear a good deal more than just the water running.

At first, with Henry's hitched, irregular breathing, knowing the strain the kid was under -- mostly thanks to Frank -- he'd blanched and withdrawn, thinking he'd stumbled on Henry having himself a good cry under the cover of a shower. That was fine, he'd thought, something Henry was definitely better off dealing with on his own than bringing to Frank. Christ knows Frank hadn't been anyone's shoulder to cry on in long enough that he wouldn't know what to do if asked. Better to cry alone in the shower, Frank figured, until --

Until Henry sort of gasped, low and breathy, and that wasn't a crying sound at all.

And that was fine too. A great use of shower time, take care of everything all at once, something Frank had done plenty of times himself. Hell, in recent years that had been a pretty mechanical part of his routine; soap up, jack off, rinse clean. A need to take care of so his head stayed clear. At least there was no incriminating mess, doing it in the shower.

But Henry doesn't sound like what he's doing is particularly mechanical, either. In fact, if Frank didn't know any better, standing frozen just outside the bathroom with the door cracked barely enough to smell the soap and hear every hitching sigh, every eager, wet motion, Frank might think Henry had brought someone in there with him. He sounds like he's getting fucked, hard and messy.

He sounds like he needs it.

Frank knows he shouldn't listen. He knows this is a breach of privacy and he knows he absolutely can't justify not backing away the second he realized what was happening. Even the shock of it doesn't excuse continuing to listen. He certainly shouldn't be letting himself get turned on.

Right now, there's a good chance that Henry's too wrapped up in whatever fantasy has him moaning that way to have heard the door start to open. Frank can very carefully, quietly, pull the door back closed and move away, wait until Henry is finished to ask for help. He can, and he does, surprised by how much it feels like scurrying to cross the room for the refuge of the little table and the reinforced chair he knows will hold his weight.

Even then, though, now that he’s picked the noise out of the general hiss and mutter of the running shower, he can hear him. Door closed or not, he knows what Henry’s doing. He should be able to ignore it, at the very least, but he can’t.

Problem is, just the idea of Henry in there touching himself is putting a line of completely inappropriate heat up Frank's spine. Up to this point he would have figured his dick wouldn't work in this state, and maybe it doesn't quite yet, but his brain is evidently ready to do it's fair share. His sluggish imagination is already putting the frequency of Henry's showers together with the very audible performance he's enjoying, totaling to the tantalizing question of whether Henry's been doing this every time he slinks off for a shower.

It's dirty down here, even in the cleaner parts of Monster Metropolis, and Henry's work helping Frank often lead to handling blood and other unpleasant things. Frank hadn't thought too much about the increased number of showers Henry was suddenly taking; he'd just assumed the kid had gotten squeamish.

Morbius had warned him to keep some distance between himself and his 'young human'. Something about the Blood Stone having strange effects on typical humans, Henry being a smaller target for said effects.

Strange effect. Three, four showers a day every day since Frank had finally woken back up with the rock stitched into his chest. 

No one was ever going to accuse Frank of being clever, but there were enough facts on offer here to do a little basic detective work. It was difficult to come to any conclusion other than that being around Frank was somehow now enough to get Henry so keyed up the only way he could handle it was to hide and take care of the need manually.

Maybe that should make Frank feel a little guiltier than it does. Henry was only being exposed to the effect of the Stone because Frank asked him to stay and help him get back to the mission. If it was really somehow true that being near the Stone was enough to have that strong of an effect on Henry, and the Stone was necessary for Frank's current level of functionality, thus making it impossible to avoid the effect of the Stone _and_ work with Frank, then in fairness, Frank should put effort into keeping away from Henry. 

He should be making plans to send him away, cut him loose. At the very least he should keep the bathroom door shut and pretend that this breach of privacy hadn't happened. 

Cutting Henry loose hasn't gone too well thus far though. It seems like Henry's more than willing to cling on, no matter how unpleasant it gets, and Frank can respect that. In all likelihood, if he tried to show Henry the door at this point, the kid would dig his heels in even harder, or turn back up later on, worse for it.

He can hear Henry so clearly like this. Trick of the acoustics, maybe; he can hear the soft curse he utters under his breath and the eager inhale at some particularly pleasant sensation. He can hear _everything_ and it’s like he’s frozen, so focused on what he can hear that he can’t spare the processing power to make himself leave the room. 

It’s entirely inappropriate, and Frank’s not good at sitting idle. 

Shoving himself to his feet, impulsive but monetarily glad for the burst of inspiration, he stomps across the room, letting his steps be heavy, trying to make noise, telegraph himself as he goes, shoving the door open as though he can hear nothing out but a purely innocent shower and calling Henry’s name.

It's almost certainly the wrong choice, he figures immediately, listening with a stunned sort of fascination to Henry choke on a curse, breath hitching with what has to be his orgasm at the sound of Frank's voice.

Which is...

He decides not to think too hard about that, actually. 

“Soon as you’re dried off, I need your help,” he says, talking over Henry’s yelp for privacy. Frank sounds remarkably calm for the jittery way his thoughts are skittering around his head, already retreating so he can get the door shut between them again. “And hurry up about it, we’ve got things to do today.”


	2. Can't Break Free

Despite Frank’s demand to get straight to business, it’s nearly three hours before Henry settles enough to be helpful.

Frank considers calling him on it, the very obvious avoidance, the manufactured excuse to run out and be away from their quarters for a while. He’s flighty and won’t make eye contact for longer than a few seconds before ducking his head or twisting away. Not once during the ten minutes of conversation Frank gets out of him immediately after his shower does he come within arm’s reach. He stands across the room from where Frank sits at the rickety table, over by the kitchen sink, and babbles his way to a reason why he can’t possibly help Frank immediately.

When Frank finally just gives in and acquiesces to it, Henry books it like his ass is on fire.

If he didn’t know Henry as well as he does, he’d suspect the kid was hooked on something. That’s what he reminds Frank of; some user jonesing for a fix too hard to focus on anything else.

Except if he  _ is  _ looking for a fix, it's not because he's started smoking or snorting or shooting something up. Frank  _ does  _ know Henry well enough to know where the kid stands on that shit, knows he'd rather die than have even a mouthful of beer, so if Henry's jonesing for something, chances seem good that it's not his fault he's itching for it.

But he also knows well enough that Henry's not going to accept that as a viable excuse for Frank to dismiss him. He hasn't done anything outright inappropriate, hasn't made any move to act on what Frank's suspecting he's feeling. That would be the line Henry would accept as viable, if he couldn't stop himself from throwing himself at Frank. Since he can, it would just come off as cruel to him, if Frank insisted on cutting him out of the mission now.

The real bitch of it is, Frank doesn't really  _ want  _ to send Henry away. He's not the best at showing it, certainly not the best at talking about it, but Frank likes having Henry around. He's tenacious, bright, eager to do good in a way Frank doesn't associate with himself. Not anymore, if ever. 

Henry reminds Frank that as much filth and darkness as he wades through, there’s still a potential for good people to make it out of the shadow, good people who  _ stay _ good.

Frank doesn't want to try making Henry leave, and if he did, Henry wouldn't go, so there's no real point in bringing it up. He thinks about biting the bullet when Henry doesn't rush back within the first hour, going to Morbius and letting him stitch Frank's ear back on, but now that Henry's aware it needs doing, it'd be like slapping him across the face to go elsewhere while he's supposedly out getting a new set of needles to manage the job.

With Henry, if nowhere else anymore, Frank tries not to be cruel. He's not good at keeping people around, and these days he's angrier than he has been in a while, the pain driving him more personal than it's been since the very beginning of this endless slog of war. He pushes and expects Henry to fall away, to give up, but Henry doesn't; he clings, he keeps coming back.

So Frank sits, and he waits. There's not much else he  _ can  _ do, and whatever sense of urgency he might have felt has waned considerably with the residual discomfort of Henry's... predicament. 

Two hours after walking out, Henry returns, triumphant with a set of surgical needles and looking far less twitchy than he had when he'd left. Frank suggests they get straight to the task, and Henry of course needs to wash his hands first. And while he's at the kitchen sink anyway, he puts on water to boil for tea. And then he has to change his shirt to something he doesn't mind ruining, like this is some large scale repair and not one of the easier things Frank's asked of him in recent days.

Watching him move around the room, chipper and eager to be helpful but almost pointedly coming up with excuses to prolong coming close to Frank at all, it's a little more tempting to try shoving him out again. He's obviously uncomfortable, and there's no easy way to fix that. 

And it's understandable for him to be uncomfortable, which Frank finds to be the real kicker to this whole line of bullshit. If the Blood Stone is responsible for Henry's change in behaviour, that means being close to Frank almost certainly makes it worse. It can't be appealing to Henry, finding himself getting worked up like that around Frank, especially not the condition he's in now. Hot and bothered and the only other body in the room is some huge, lumbering jackass with a significant portion of his body augmented by machinery.

And sort of dead. Can't forget that part, even if Frank's not honestly  _ entirely  _ certain how that works at this point.

The pussyfooting around  _ is _ a waste of time though, however understandable it may be. Henry skirting around him and avoiding taking care of the actual issue at hand is just dragging out the amount of time they  _ need  _ to be in one room together.

Finally, before Frank finally loses his temper over it, Henry squares his shoulders, grabs a medical kit and his new set of needles, and brings the whole mess over to the table. After the first few times he’d been asked to help with this shit, he’d figured out a method that worked for him. He’s markedly quiet though, getting all his tools set up. Frank doesn’t call him on it, just angles his chair into position, trying to make it easy for Henry to move around him. 

Might as well try and get it done fast, until Frank can figure out some kind of alternative or the Blood Stone is no longer a factor. 

It must be awkward for Henry, doing this particular job. It's certainly awkward for Frank, given how close they have to stay for the duration, the gentle way Henry's left hand curls around his jaw, manually guiding him to angle his face to maximize the light they've got. 

Throughout, Henry breathes in tight, artificially controlled breaths, like he's trying to meditate. His skin feels burning hot against Frank's and he seems to carefully position himself so he only touches Frank where it's absolutely necessary. Where his fingers  _ do _ come to rest, the touch is fare gentler than Frank thinks is strictly clinical. They don't linger, but there's a minute hesitance to Henry's movements that suggest the  _ desire  _ to linger, which is almost worse.

Henry's trying to be professional, and Frank can read that in all the little ways he's failing to be. It's unbelievably uncomfortable, and Frank doesn't have a single clue how bad it must be for Henry, or how in the hell he can help. It doesn't seem like there's a damn thing he could do but make the whole damn situation worse, drawing attention to what Henry clearly wants to go unnoticed, or at the very least unmentioned.

Thankfully, it's not nearly as long of a task as it could be. Henry's handy with a needle and even fighting the urge to linger, he's making quick work of the task. A few days ago, Frank had managed to sever three of his fingers, and Henry had begged off helping him there, claiming he was afraid he’d manage to make it worse. Frank’d had to sit there perfectly still as Morbius lined up all the bone and veins and groups of tissue, painstakingly reattaching the digits and lecturing him about risk-taking.

Still, it's some twenty minutes before Henry breathes a thin sigh of relief, breath tickling the back of Frank's head as he shifts in place behind him. 

Frank expects him to rush off immediately. He expects an excuse, thinks -- studiously telling himself he’s not  _ hoping _ \-- Henry would need to rush off immediately for another shower. Follow the pattern he’s only just now picked up on.

Instead, it’s as though, having finished the actual job, Henry freezes up. Now that he’s here, close enough to touch, he doesn’t want to move away again. 

Warm fingers run over the line of stitching at the back of Frank's ear, idle and thoughtless, like Henry doesn't realize he's doing it. He's standing so close that Frank can feel it when he inhales a little sharper, like he's breathing in some specific smell he can't get anywhere else, unconsciously scenting the air in Frank's space.

Unnerving, after how rigidly he’s worked to keep his distance recently, especially in the last few hours. But maybe that was part of it -- maybe having left whatever sphere of influence the Stone (or Frank) created, stepping back into it had hit him harder. 

It’s hard to say what he’s supposed to do about any of this. If he  _ should _ say something, and if so  _ what.  _ Honest preference, he’d rather not need to talk about it -- he’s no good with words or emotions, and he never has been. Better if he could  _ do  _ something, but what the hell is he meant to  _ do _ with a situation so private. 

He shifts forward in his seat, and Henry sways unconsciously after him, fingers burning prints into the side of Frank’s neck. Frank’s pulse remains perfectly, mechanically steady even as his brain goes to static. He  _ likes _ the warmth of Henry touching, he  _ likes _ the idea of Henry wanting him, and that’s almost certainly the wrong reaction.

Twisting in the chair, listening to it creak it’s complaints despite being heavily reinforced to hold his extra weight, he watches Henry’s hand hover in place, eyes hazy, expression confused. When he says Henry’s name, kindly as he can manage, his brows draw together hard and he blinks rapidly like he’s trying to clear his eyes. 

A blush immediately blooms on Henry’s face as he takes a step back, and part of Frank wants to reach out, toss the kid a line. He looks like he’s half-drowning in whatever it is that’s fucking with him, but for all Frank knows, touching him would just make it worse.

“You okay,” he asks instead, trying to keep it from sounding like he’s annoyed, because he’s not. “Seem kinda out of it.”

Henry shakes his head, mouth parting and then closing, eyes squeezing shut as he flinches away another half-step. Given that reaction, it was probably for the best, then, that Frank hadn’t actually tried to touch him. He looks sick, pale where he’s not red from blushing, dark circles under his eyes like he hasn’t been sleeping.

“I’m just -- when we’re, when I can --” Henry tries, stammering around words he can’t seem to sort properly before coughing out, growling in frustration at his own inability to say what he wants. “Sorry, I’m, it’s just… Fuck, I can’t. I need -- I gotta take a shower.”

It goes unsaid that he just got out of one. Goes unsaid, too, that Henry knows Frank heard him earlier, but the darkening of that blush speaks volumes. Frank only gets to see that blush for a second, before Henry utters a shaky huff and turns away, fleeing for the bathroom.

Frank tries to call after him, lurching awkwardly to his feet. He hasn’t got a fucking clue what he’d say if Henry actually came back, but it feels wrong to let him go. 

All he gets is a terse demand, “Let it  _ go, _ Frank!” and the bathroom door slammed between them.

Standing there by the table, first aid supplies still spread out over the surface, Frank can hear the water running. He can hear the change, subtle but defined, when Henry steps under the spray. He can’t help any of that, but he  _ should _ be able to keep himself from drifting toward the closed door, the better to listen as Henry takes care of himself. If he was decent, he’d clear up the mess and ignore it, let it go like Henry asked.

Instead he finds himself standing by the door, tempted to crack it open again. He could hear Henry so much better with it open, not that he needs any clarity. Henry still tries to keep quiet, but Frank lets himself hear every muffled whine and bitten off curse. He listens to every minute of it, start to finish, thinking about speaking Henry’s name, thinking about the sound Henry made when he came last time, sounds he’d had no right to but couldn’t unhear.

He keeps himself quiet. He doesn’t touch himself, though the idea holds a small measure of appeal; he doesn’t get hard and he doesn’t go so far as the test if it’s even a possibility. 

But he listens. He listens to Henry sigh and groan and he listens to him cum with a soft cry, what sounds like a fist smacking against the tile. 

When the water turns off, he moves away from the door, careful to keep himself quiet, and starts putting away the first aid kit. Henry’s tea sits on the kitchen counter, cool now and getting colder, but Henry slinks off from the bathroom to his bed without a word. 

He stows the kit and pours the tea down the drain, resolutely not thinking about anything at all.


	3. Do It Baby

The next few days are excruciating. 

At first, Henry seems keen to avoid Frank as much as possible. He sleeps a great deal, or shams it well enough that Frank can’t bring himself to call him on it. When he is up, he’s flighty, a nervous thing flitting at the periphery of Frank’s awareness, lost in his own head and then twitching away when brought out of it.

He answers when spoken to, with a moment’s hesitation, and then as soon as he can excuse himself, speeds off to make tea or with some muttered excuse about needing air. He’s irritable, but it seems inward facing, not directed at Frank or anyone else, and if Frank has to hear one more miserable apology roll out of Henry’s mouth, he’s pretty sure he’ll combust.

Frank needs time before he gets back to his war, time to stock ammo and try getting used to maneuvering in this frame, since evidently he’s gonna be stuck in it for a while. While he’s doing that, he and Henry have been granted indefinite stay in a set of rooms, but those rooms aren’t large. The walls are thin and, given that so much of the construction down here is built around existing mechanical constructs, the acoustics are weird.

It’s not that Frank is trying to listen to Henry jacking off, fitful and frustrating sessions that are becoming increasingly frequent. He’s just… not really trying not to listen, either. They have limited space and he’s got too much to do already without trying to spare either of them the embarrassment. 

He figures it’s like housing with a sick roommate in a cheap squat. They give each other space, but just by virtue of circumstance he’s not going to be able to avoid hearing certain things. If it were the flu Henry was working through, he’d have to hear every bout of puking or diarrhea. 

Same thing. He can’t help what he hears, and they don’t talk about it.

It’s three days after the ear-reattachment business that it starts to get out of hand.

Early on in the day, Henry crept out of his room, moving through their shared space to the kitchen like he was trying to go unnoticed. He made himself tea, stayed standing over his mug until the cup was well steeped, threw out the bag. All of this was relatively normal, followed a certain rhythm, but he did the whole goddamn process with his eyes locked on Frank.

He looked at Frank the way a starving man might look at another man's steak; hopeful and hungry and resigned to remain without. 

Usually, since Frank's miraculous second resurrection, after securing his tea, Henry would retreat to his room, the cup would reappear on the draining board later, and in between times, they would interact in as brief of exchanges as Henry could orchestrate. 

That time, Henry didn't go anywhere. He sipped his tea a few times, but mostly he just remained in the kitchenette while Frank worked on reloading this Mk14 at anywhere near the speed he'd managed before. Frank didn't speak to Henry, and Henry didn't have a goddamn word for Frank, either, but he'd certainly had time for looking. 

It felt like it lasted for _hours,_ even as Frank's more rational brain registered that the actual duration isn't even a full sixty minutes. Somewhere between forty-five and fifty minutes after he emerged, Henry seemed to realize where he was, standing a little straighter, blinking, and then retreating. 

The mug was left on the counter. Henry's attempt to keep quiet, after shutting himself in his room, was perfunctory at best.

Half an hour later, Henry returned. He didn't go all the way into the kitchen this time, he just lurked in the space between the rickety table Frank was sitting at and the hall that leads to their rooms. The same fixated, overly intense expression was tight on his face, his eyes locked on Frank. This time, there was no pretense about whether he was staring or not; he barely seemed to want to blink.

Frank has no idea how any of this magic, spell-type bullshit is meant to work. He doesn't know if he needs to be worried about some possibility of Henry hurting himself like this, or if there's any chance of Henry getting aggressive with someone else. Frank's not particularly worried about Henry trying any kind of surprise attack; the kid's too out of his head to manage stealth when he's like this, and he's hardly showing any signs of trying to get aggressive.

Drunk or sober, fully fit or badly wounded, Frank's more than capable of handling himself in a fight, especially one-on-one with someone less than half his size with zero combat experience. He's sure there's ways Henry could make himself into a threat, but even if he tries, Frank can't really think of the kid as a physical danger. He's not worried about _Henry_ hurting _him._

Which is not to say that Frank's not got plenty of worries on his mind.

What he's worried about is this magic bullshit fucking with Henry bad enough to do him some kind of real harm. He's worried about Henry reaching out to touch, absent and hardly seeing aware of the action the way he'd been after fixing Frank's ear, and catching Frank off guard, worried about _him_ hurting Henry in some reflex reaction to unexpected contact. He's worried about the fact that Henry might already be hurting himself somehow just getting through the day being this close to Frank.

He's worried because the way Henry's been looking at him doesn't suggest violence or anything that's particularly studious. Henry's looking at him like looking is a compulsion he can't quash. Like he's so starved for something he can't physically get that he'll unconsciously try to settle for at least getting to _look_ his fill.

It's unfair to get frustrated with Henry standing there, perfectly wordless and just staring, but Frank can't quite help the curl of agitation tightening in his guts. He's never much cared for being stared at, and Henry's fixed on him, hardly breaking for a blink, much less finding anything else to look at. 

When Frank sets his weapon down and says Henry's name, loud and sharp, Henry sucks in a sharp breath, obviously shocked. Frank watches his face go red from hairline to collar; he glances down and sees Henry's hard already, tending the front of his slacks. 

There's no way to tell for a certainty if Henry knows he saw; Henry stays just long enough to look bleakly horrified with himself before once again taking off like all the fires of hell are at his back.

They can't live like this, Frank thinks. He _won’t_ live like this; it's unfair to Henry at best and some kind of cruelty at worst for him to be trapped like this when he's obviously not finding any relief. They need to figure something else out, figure out who needs to go where so they can get something like work done again. Once Frank's back out in the field, this whole issue will go away, distance enforced long term.

He can't exactly go chasing after Henry though, not when he can hear the kid's body hit his creaking mattress and everything that comes after. He's not going to rub the issue in Henry's face or give him reason to feel like he's being made fun of for something he can't help, and -- and listening is different than walking in. 

Sitting out here and pretending he can’t hear Henry loud and clear is entirely different than walking in and pretending he can’t see or doesn’t notice. Walking in and starting this conversation now would be a real asshole move.

Frank's mean, and he's probably cruel, too, but he tries not to be a prick all the time. 

Sitting at the table and waiting, Frank figures it'll only be a matter of a few minutes before Henry returns -- he needed less than half an hour last time to get himself off and wander back out here last time.

Maybe Henry falls asleep. Maybe he just has better restraint after struggling through two sessions that sounded about as far from satisfying as orgasm possibly could. In any event, it's more than two hours before Henry's door creaks open, and when he slips out into their shared space, he looks a little more clear headed than he has throughout the rest of the day. He keeps himself strategically close to the wall and out of Frank's way as he sidles into the kitchen and makes another cup of tea.

They don't say a word and Henry barely looks at Frank, studiously focused on his cup. Once the water boils and he pours it out, he takes the mug and retreats back to his room, and Frank --

Frank is no stranger to the ravages of hope, the way wanting things to work out a certain way or simply be different than they are only makes reality kick that much harder. He tries not to hope for things, and he knows that high expectations only lead to crushing disappointments.

He also knows that he doesn't want to send Henry away, especially not if this is getting better. It's likely a stupid thing, to imagine it's getting better when for days it's done nothing but get worse, but...

But Henry took the mug back to his room. He didn't linger, he didn't stare in that disconcertingly fixed, hungry way. He made tea and he took it quietly back to his room, and by the sounds of it, drank his tea and went to sleep. That has to mean something. Maybe like some sort of psychological blister, it had to balloon out, get worse before it got better.

For the most part, the next morning feels nearly normal. It feels a little tentative, like the both of them are dancing carefully around acknowledging that there was any interruption in normalcy at all, but Henry eats his breakfast at the same table as Frank's sitting at working through his list of stockpiled ammunition and where he can acquire more. 

Henry makes bad jokes about the milk having gone over, laughs at his own jokes when Frank doesn't do more than huff, and clears his plate. They talk calmly and plainly about the next step in the mission, the next front of Frank's war, discussing how and when to do what needs doing. It feels, in general, like both of them are trying very hard to avoid any allusion to or mention of the break in their routine.

Like they're both thinking about it -- Frank certainly finds it hard to think of much else -- but very carefully not talking about any of it, as though yesterday didn't happen, and the weirder spots of the previous days didn't either. Days of Henry being unable to share a room with Frank for more than an hour without having to go jack off, swept aside as too uncomfortable for conversation.

Frank's not certain if he's relieved about that or not. He's not even sure he has an actual opinion on it. He's just ready for the weird shit to be over. Or, at least, as over as it can be when he's still nine feet tall and significantly more reliant on complex machinery than he had been before Wolverine's bastard of a kid got the drop on him.

Henry claims to need to do some kind of complicated shit with his computers that'll take up most of the day. Equipment that needs to be tested, making sure he's properly calibrated signals to do what he needs from down here. Frank has no desire to understand half of what all that entails, and has work of his own to do outside their little apartment, so he gives the kid a pat on the shoulder and heads out, leaving him to it.

Tentatively, he allows himself to be grateful. Henry didn't flinch from the touch to his shoulder, nor did he get weird about being within arm's reach all morning. Things seem to be back to what passes for normal, and nothing had gotten _truly_ weird between them. Hadn't even had to talk about it.

Which is, he thinks with some measure of bitterness, why it's only natural to come back to their apartment some hours later to find Henry kneeling on the floor by the reinforced chair Frank's been using, curled over to press his forehead to the edge of the seat, shaking. His hands are clenched so tight to the front of his sweat-soaked t-shirt that he looks ready to tear holes in the cloth.

He looks ill, paler than ever and sweaty. When the door shuts behind Frank, his head turns toward the noise, and his eyes are flat and hungry again. Frank very carefully does not look in Henry's lap. Let him have some measure of dignity, at least -- and if not him, then let Frank.

When Frank says Henry's name, expecting him to get red faced and scatter off again, Henry sits up a little, head off the chair and mouth slightly parted. He looks a bit like a dog, unsure if he's been called but eager. 

It's only when Frank gets close that any kind of recognition seems to filter in, of the situational potential if nothing else. Henry's face does darken in a blush, his glazed eyes track Frank crossing the room and his head tips back to look up when he stands over him, but it’s very obvious he’s not all there at the moment. His shaking is worse, his eyes starved and tense, his hands slipping lower on his stomach.

Frank wants to get Henry off his knees, wants to shake some kind of sense back into him, because however embarrassed Henry’s gonna be about being seen in this state, he’ll be a hell of a lot more mortified if Frank lets this go any further. 

Just closing his hand on Henry’s arm makes Henry’s eyes slide half shut, a gasp of breath leaving him. Mindlessly eager, that’s the best way to describe the compliant way he moves with Frank; like a man pulled from the heat of the driest desert and offered unrestricted access to water. 

Henry leans toward Frank, and once he’s on his feet he tries to lurch into Frank’s space, blindly seeking contact; before Frank can move entirely out of his space, he’s got his fingers in Frank’s shirtfront, holding on so tightly Frank really does worry he’ll hurt the kid trying to pry him loose.

Since Morbius took it upon himself to undo Frank’s death, it’s seemed that the more stressed out Frank feels, the more his brain seems to try to slow down. Whatever the Blood Stone may or may not be doing to truly reanimate his corpse, his brain still seems prone to stalling out under emotional stress, far more than it ever seemed to do before becoming minced meat.

When Henry breathes Frank’s name, Frank’s brain tries to check right the fuck out. There’s a frisson of want against wrong, the desire against the innate knowledge that Henry has no idea what he’s doing. Frank jerks his hands off Henry’s shoulders like he’s been burnt and Henry shoves himself closer, pressing his cheek to Frank’s chest, humming an obscene sound of satisfaction.

“Frank, please,” he says, and that’s some kind of unfair, Frank’s idiot brain sparking off with a deep, lizard-like pride at his name in that tone. At the sound of someone he likes not just wanting him but _needing_ him. And it’s like that’s all Henry can say now, Frank’s name interspersed with undefined pleading.

It’s incredibly wrong, given that the kid can’t even articulate an actual want while he’s trying to rub himself off against Frank’s thigh, and while Frank thinks, maybe, in a different setting, he might be able to justify helping out the way Henry so badly seems to want, like this he can’t do anything but grapple back onto Henry’s shoulders and pry him away, holding him at arm’s length while the kid whines in desperate negation. 

Unsure what else he can do, Frank settles for the panic-driven impulse to give him a sharp shake. _That_ he can readily accept as a relief, the way Henry’s eyes blink back to awareness, the flush on his face not arousal but pure embarrassment. 

Relief, certainly, but not without some measure of guilt. Henry looks goddamn miserable suddenly, keenly aware of his physical state and what must have happened, though Frank couldn’t say for a certainty if he knows exactly what he’d just been doing. He hopes hell Henry _doesn’t,_ miserable as he looks just to have Frank shaking him out of the fugue. 

A compassionate man would let Henry run when he tries to pull himself free of Frank’s grip, would let the embarrassment burn away for a bit before he tried to have the conversation it’s now very clear they can’t avoid having. Someone kinder might even take the time to find a way to put distance between them that would be less like assigning some kind of punishment for this lack of self control.

Frank is not kind, or compassionate, and this problem needs to be dealt with before Henry ends up hurt or worse. Seeing him staring from across the room with hungry, empty eyes was bad enough; having him clutching onto Frank with mindless desperation, looking up at him and seeming to see nothing at all, that was far worse. 

Whatever pity Frank’s let rule him thus far, trying to skirt around the issue like it can ever be anything but a dangerous, distracting problem, that’s burnt out of him by the concern that this is going to do something long-lasting or permanent to Henry’s mind.

Much of a monster as Frank is willing to be, watching Henry go mad for want or from exposure to whatever the fuck the stone is throwing off that’s making the kid act this way isn’t something he’swilling to just do.

So when Henry tries to throw himself out of Frank’s grip, Frank simply holds steady. He doesn’t want to leave bruises, but when Henry thrashes against his hold, he can only hold tighter until he gets the point that Frank’s not letting him go. At one point Henry tries to shove against Frank’s rebuilt forearm, either forgetting or not caring that it’s made up of metal pistons and cabling, and tears prick into his eyes as he hisses through his teeth in pain. 

Frank still refuses to let go, holds on until Henry cottons on to the fact that he truly can't get away and goes resignedly limp in Frank's hands. Then Frank kicks the second, less sturdy chair away from the table and shoves Henry down into it. Looking miserable, heaving a great upset huff, Henry at least displays enough smarts not to try bolting once he's been let go.

He sits there, shivering again, refusing to look at Frank, while Frank sits across from him and stares him down. From under the edges of Henry's shirt sleeves, Frank can see the creeping start of bruises on either arm, dark red shadows that will deepen to purples and blues in the next few hours, left from Frank's hands. The sight puts an ugly feeling in his chest that Frank elects to ignore, snapping his fingers and demanding Henry's attention.

The fleeting look Henry gives him is wet-eyed and resentful, his hands once again tangled in the front of his own shirt, low on his stomach. He's still noticeably hard in his jeans, and Frank decides to ignore that, too.

"You need to tell me what the fuck's been goin' on with you," Frank says. It's not exactly what he'd planned to say -- he hadn't really had a plan, but he was leaning toward the certainty that they needed to put real distance between themselves at this point, and he wasn't generally one to pussyfoot around that kind of order. A clean break would be for the best. His mouth, evidently, has other intentions. "I can't help you if you keep trying to hide this shit."

For a minute, Henry just squirms in his seat, face red, eyes angry and once again cast anywhere in the room but at Frank. He's breathing heavier now, like he's on the edge of crying, maybe, or just panting like an animal under duress.

Frank says, "Look at me and tell me what the hell the problem is," and Henry's face somehow manages to go a shade darker. Frank takes a breath and tries again, fighting his own agitation at the situation to try and sound a little gentler. "Henry, look at me."

"I _can’t,_ " Henry snaps, the words bursting out of him. "Every time I look at you it's like -- like my whole head goes stupid. Just being in the room with you, I can't stop it, can't stop _thinking_ about it, about fff-" 

There his voice falters, fingers twisting in this shirt so it's starting to bare the skin below. Even refusing to lift his head or meet Frank's eye, Frank can tell his expression is miserable, the choking of his voice followed by a tightly controlled swallow and a few gasping pulls for air before he launches off again, unprompted.

"I can _smell you,_ all the goddamn time. You smell so fucking good and I'm -- all the time, I'm so goddamn horny it's all I can think about. Even when you're gone, or when I leave, it doesn't matter. You were out god knows where out in the city today and it's all I could think about. Not a clue where you were and I can't stop _thinking_ about it, about how good it would be to fuck you."

By this point, Frank would appreciate a minute to try processing some of that down into more manageable concepts. Between the specifics of it actually, specifically, being _Frank_ that Henry's been thinking of and the added detail of Henry being able to smell him, whatever all that entails, Frank feels a little adrift. 

Henry doesn't give him a minute, barely even pausing to gulp air as he continues, like now that he's allowed himself to speak, he physically can't stop.

"It was easier before you woke up. I could ignore it, I could -- I could sit next to you, I didn't have to worry about you breaking my arm if I touched you. It didn't even feel like being horny, then, I just -- just needed to be by you.” The barest pause, Henry gulping down air and shifting fitfully in his seat. Frank thinks about telling him to shut up, giving him the mercy of an excuse to stop gutting himself. “Then you woke up and all the sudden I couldn't -- it's like everything goes back to it. I keep trying to, to _handle it_ but nothing works, nothing makes it stop, and when you leave or I make myself stay away, I feel like I'm gonna die whether I jerk off thinking about you or not."

Frank can see the tears slipping down Henry's face, and he can see the absent way he's starting to rock in his seat, one hand still clutching his shirt and the other curled against the bared skin below it. He looks miserable and desperate, and all Frank can think about is ' _nothing makes it stop_ ', ' _feel like I'm gonna die_ '.

"It's like I'm going crazy. Even getting myself off doesn't feel good anymore." Henry breathes, a dismal undertone, like he's speaking now without hope of being heard. "Most of the time, it's like my skin wants to peel off. At least when you let me touch you I feel good. Can't think, but at least it feels good."

Coming from someone else, or even just said in a slightly different tone, Frank might have suspected an attempt at emotional manipulation. It's obvious, however, that Henry barely realizes that he can be heard; he looks like he's starting to slip into his head again, still holding his head so he isn't quite looking at Frank, but his fingers are skipping under the waistband of his jeans and his words are starting to sound unfocused. 

Frank speaks before he can overthink his way out of it. 

"What if I got you off," he asks, and that gets Henry's attention at last. His eyes are wide and starved, pupils so blown his eyes look black as he sits up straight and, without seeming to realize he's doing it, turns his whole body toward Frank. "If I… would that help, d'you think?"

As ridiculously inappropriate as the offer feels to make, Frank can see the way Henry wrestles with his answer, and that tells him plenty. If Henry's suffering and he can do something to ease it, then he will. Even if it's not a real, permanent fix. 

Henry licks his lips and jerks his head to one side, looking away. "I don't want you to do something out of pity that'll make shit weird later," he grumbles, fingers jerking out of his waistband so he can paw at his face.

Before being given the Blood Stone, it had seemed that every action drained some finite energy in him, meaning he had to minimize unnecessary motion or effort. Standing after sitting or falling was an enormous expenditure of energy, fighting to heft his massive, cobbled together body against gravity was draining and usually dramatically shortened the time he had between needing one of Morbius's godforsaken pills. 

Now, despite the general awkwardness of suddenly being three feet taller and significantly heavier, moving himself around is no more exhausting than it had ever been. 

At the very least, that’s one benefit of the Blood Stone, and he uses that now to slip off his chair and on his knees, telegraphing the motion as he comes to kneel in front of Henry’s chair. This close, he can feel the heat baking off Henry, the fixation of his stare as sharp as an electric current. If Henry is going to bolt, Frank won’t stop him, hand moving slowly to settle on one of Henry’s knees, but Frank doesn’t really think that’s going to happen.

“When have I ever done anything out of pity?” he asks, feeling the shuddering that had been wracking Henry give way to blissed out stillness. The slightest nudge of his thumb gets Henry compliantly spreading his legs, Henry’s expression wide eyed and filled with a sort of distressed, desperate interest. “I’m doing you a favour, no different than what you did while I was… laid up.”

If Frank can maintain the idea that this is some kind of medical assist, he can ignore or negate his own want. 

Judging by Henry's breathy, nerved-up laughter, he's buying that about as much as Frank, but he doesn't back away or flinch when Frank's big hands smooth up his thighs. When Frank tells him to get his dick out, he just breathes a soft, eager agreement, hands clumsy on his belt.

Henry's breath hisses through his teeth as he lifts his hips and lets Frank drag his jeans down, leaving them bunched up under his knees. His dick is angry red and leaking, and when Frank gets his mouth around the tip, Henry gasps and seizes up, clearly trying to keep still. Fraught as Henry seems, Frank knows it’s best not to linger, but -- call it pride, call it selfishness, he can’t help wanting to make it good, too.

Pressing against Henry’s thighs, holding him to the chair hard enough that it creaks beneath them, Frank ducks his head and swallows Henry down. Henry’s skin seems terribly warm, under his hands and in his hair, but his cock in Frank’s mouth is almost searingly hot, the heat and pulse under his tongue somehow addictive.

Frank’s heart doesn’t pound and his own dick adamantly refuses to get hard, but every gasping groan and bitten off curse sends a thrum of arousal through Frank nonetheless. If this were purely about helping Henry, about some medical concern, he doesn’t think that would matter so much, but it’s a part of himself he can examine later, or never. Right now he’d much rather focus on the grip of Henry’s fingers in his hair, the shiver of his thighs under Frank’s hands as he tries to thrust up into Frank’s mouth. 

It doesn’t take long before Henry’s choking out some vague warning, and when he cums, Frank still noisily sucking at his cock, he sobs some kind of babbling praise, breath hitching around every syllable. It sounds like it’s his first time, or the best he’s ever had. Frank’s pretty sure he should feel guilty about how much he likes that. 

When he pulls away to wipe at his lips, smearing away spit and worse, Henry slides down out of his seat and onto the floor, pushing his way into Frank’s arms and kissing his mouth with a sort of eager abandon that tells Frank all he needs to know about the effectiveness of the exercise. 

“Don’t leave, don’t go,” Henry pants into his mouth, unbothered by the unnatural coolness of Frank’s skin or the uncomfortable plastic tubing that loops around his abdomen. Frank can feel Henry everywhere he touches, burning hot and just as desperate as he’d been before orgasm. “Fuck, I’m so close, Frank, please, please…”

Perhaps it’s unwise. Perhaps it’s giving in to a dangerous indulgence under the pretense of helping. Perhaps he’s making it worse, or ruining whatever working relationship they might have after. 

Maybe Henry needs more. Maybe he needs to be cut off now, cold turkey.

There’s no knowing. There’s no answer Frank’s comfortable hunting for, not with Henry clinging to him, so hot and so terrified of going right back to dealing with this alone.

“Whatever you need,” Frank says, careful as he wraps his arms around Henry’s smaller frame and lifts him as he climbs to his feet. The whole point has been to keep Henry from getting hurt, and Frank’s unwilling to compromise that goal now. “Just not on the floor. Lemme take you to bed.”


	4. More Human than Human

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this was a hug lag in chapters and I'm super sorry. In the last month I had been super sick, moved houses, and, you know, been dealing with a global pandemic while sharing relatively small living quarters with someone who works in a hospital and being immunocompromised with weak lungs. I'm still very sorry this took So Long, and I hope y'all enjoy.

Frank’s not entirely sure if he needs to sleep anymore. For the most part, the only kind of tired he’s felt since waking up with the Blood Stone shoved in his chest has been the kind of emotionally exhausted shit that stems from being asked to accept too many new, impossible things as true all at once. With the Stone, he doesn’t seem to feel tired, or hungry, and pain is an oddly academic experience.

Some time after round three, Henry started to flag finally. He still begged Frank to stay, to touch him, and Frank couldn’t help himself. 

At that point, there wasn’t much merit to restraint anyway, and Henry seemed so genuinely distressed by the idea of Frank leaving, it just made sense to stay. 

Henry pushes him into the bed and sits on his face, riding back against his mouth as Frank eats him out. That forth orgasm tears sounds out of Henry’s throat that Frank never would have expected to hear, delight in every high, moaning sigh. Just the sound of him like that, stunned by the force of his own pleasure, is one of the hottest things Frank has ever experienced.

Regardless of how aroused he thinks he is, Frank’s dick never truly gets hard. There’s a sluggish curl of heat low in his gut and a sort of fitful tension in the muscles of his thighs, but he stays soft for the duration. Henry had seemed distressed by that in a moment of agitated coherence after letting Frank hold him in his lap and stroke him off, but that concern had petered out pretty quickly after when Frank started kissing at the kid’s neck.

Whoever had the responsibility of tallying Frank’s sins likely had their hands well full last night, he figures, letting himself drift on an unusual cocktail of good emotion as Henry falls asleep curled against his chest.

Frank can't sleep, but he leaves Henry right where he is, laying on a bed he doesn't quite fit in and staring into the dark. He tries not to enjoy the simple comfort of sharing a bed too much, tries not to have any developed feelings or opinions on not being able to fuck Henry the way the kid seemed to want. 

Is it decency if he's just physically incapable? As far as he'd let this go, what did that one little thing really matter? However the score was kept, he'd given in to a weaker part of his nature in the name of giving Henry some chance at relief. He didn't even know if it had done anything to help at all, desperate and distractible as Henry had been right up to the very end. 

There was no way to put a moral qualifier on it. He'd said he just wanted to help get Henry back in fighting form, help him stop suffering what seemed to be a brutal cycle of endless want he obviously couldn't break out of himself, and he'd been sincere. That _was_ what he wanted. 

It just wasn't the only thing he wanted. That was a part of himself he would have to deal with -- it was a part of himself he had to deal with over and over, the part that made attachments with other people, that went soft. The part that already ached with some future grief at the idea of Henry ending up as another casualty in this eternal war. 

However hard Frank tried, he couldn't seem to kill that part of himself. It grew back, relentless and impossible, refusing to learn or be tamed. 

He could have sent Henry away. It might have been the best for both of them, even if it _did_ cause Henry more distress at first. An addict cut from their supply suffered at first too, and then their body started healing and they stopped needing the drug so bad.

Or they died.

Frank wanted Henry to stay with him, to be the voice on his comm, his eye in the sky. He liked Henry's drive, he liked his intensity, his focus on doing good. He liked that Henry was, to his core, a kind and decent man. That he was willing to put his faith in Frank as a good person in spite of seeing the opposite a dozen times a day at least. 

People like Henry were necessary to there being any hope of a better world, a world worth fighting this hard for. Frank knew he was lucky to have met someone like Henry, to have had that person stick with him despite how hard he'd shoved him away.

Once, he'd felt lucky to have Linus hitched to his wagon, too. That had gone in a worse direction that he ever could have considered, and was shaping up to end uglier still.

Laying there and feeling Henry's whole body sink slowly against his own, as though even in sleep he's trying to fit them both together into something that works, Frank knows there's no way to keep this from going sour. It was a mistake he just couldn't seem to help making, letting someone in and leaning on them just enough to stumble when they disappeared.

Maybe he's a selfish son of a bitch. Maybe he's just too fucking stupid to learn.

His arm curls around Henry and his eyes close. He can pretend to sleep just as well as he can pretend none of this will ever matter, that having Henry with him wasn't an indulgence that was going to blow up in their faces someday much too soon. 

It would have been so whether he allowed this to happen or not. It would happen whether he walked out now, while Henry was too deeply asleep to complain, or later, when he was conscious enough to be hurt by it.

There was no morality to either choice, so it's okay to indulge the selfish asshole side of himself. 

He knows, hours later, the moment Henry wakes up. They've sunk so closely together in the middle of Henry's too-small bed that Frank can feel the barest hitch of a yawn and the slow stiffness of a muted stretch. Henry's awake but trying to be considerate, like he thinks Frank has also been sleeping. 

It's sweet in an unexpected way, and when Frank tightens his arm around Henry -- which must be uncomfortable, with the mechanical additions -- Henry huffs out a defeated breath, fingers curling against Frank’s chest.

Frank had started to feel considerably more at peace with what had happened, and what might happen in the near future depending on how Henry was feeling upon waking. Given the opportunity to ‘sleep on it’ (or at least close his eyes and pretend to), he’d coasted on the idea that there had been no clearly right or wrong option, and whatever happened was something to worry about somewhere far up the road after the fact.

That defeated sigh slaps him back to the reality of what they’d done, and how utterly hopeless it had been in actually helping make anything better. How idiotic it was to keep pretending he did it for any other reason than satisfying his own want. 

He’d allowed himself a moment of weakness that he’d known might do more harm than good, and now there’s nothing to be done but weather the fallout and try to make sure Henry can do the same.

When his arm shifts off Henry’s back, the kid quickly rolls over to lay beside Frank, just enough room between them in the narrow space for their shoulders to touch. Frank expects Henry to yell, maybe, or run again, though where he’d go Frank isn’t sure, since most of his running has been here, to his bed. He prepares himself for anger, resigns himself to Henry being as pissed off as he deserves to be.

The only comfort, really, is that Henry’s not clawing to get back in his arms, trying to rub himself off on Frank’s thigh like he’s too desperate to think of anything else. He’s shivering still, but for the moment he seems to have enough control of himself to be able to register what they’d done and have some feeling about it other than simply wanting more, the way he’d been last night. 

Anger is easy to deal with, especially when he’s earned it. Henry will likely recognize that Frank acted with some measure of altruism, but he’d be right to be pissed off about Frank letting it go as far as he had. 

Slowly, carefully, Frank lowers his arm back over his chest, and tries to think what the hell he’s supposed to do here. An apology he can think of saying would fall flat, be laughably inadequate, and getting up and just leaving seems tasteless even for him. As if Henry were some passing fling, as if there’s no emotion behind what had happened or why. 

"So how pissed off are you," Henry asks, the smallness of his voice robbing his tone of the clear attempt at lightness.

Frank's heart cannot stop, or slow, or beat any harder than the perfectly mechanical precision. All the little physiological signs of shock simply don't happen anymore; the hairs on his arms and neck don't rise, his breath doesn't stick. Emotions are felt solely in his head, which somehow makes them all the more unbearable. 

Laying there side by side and staring up at the pale ceiling, Frank can _feel_ his shock, but he can't show it without intentionally choosing too. It should be a dream come true, the perfect mask of unaffected calm, but like this it just makes him feel the extent of what he's lost, how inhuman he's become.

He exhales a careful breath he doesn't even know if he needed to take, and turns his head just far enough to really look at Henry. 

As much as Frank can't show anything, Henry seems incapable of hiding. His jaw is clenched tight and his arms are wrapped close around his chest. With his face in profile, Frank can only see one eye, squeezed shut, and the tear track running across the tautness of his cheek, sliding to his ear. 

Henry looks as miserable as Frank feels, and while Frank could understand him being angry, he can't seem to get his mind to wrap around this. The guilt and the hurt and expectation that _Frank_ will be mad.

It takes him way too long to actually push words from his throat. "Why would I be pissed off?"

He watches it hit Henry, confusion and then at last some spark of resentment. Not real anger, not yet, but maybe the kid's working up to it. 

Sniffing, eyes blinking open, Henry sits up and twists on the bed. His knee digs into Frank's thigh, but he hardly seems to notice. 

"That _proves_ it," Henry says, half sulking but edged with some kind of bleak frustration Frank doesn't quite understand. He's not sure he wants to understand it, familiar as it rings. "Whatever wires are crossed in your head, they're gonna uncross eventually, and you'll be pissed off then if you really aren't now."

Some emotions still show plenty clear, without Frank having to intentionally make a show of them. His brows still draw in tight, his jaw still clenches. Annoyance is like anger, so natural to him that even death can stamp it out of him. "I'm not the one who was --"

Henry cuts him off, red building in his cheeks as he looks away. Frank's starting to get a dismally good idea of where that resentment and bleak frustration is aimed, and it's not at him. "You really expect me to believe that you're okay with me losing every scrap of self control _now,_ that you're _fine_ with it being after I watched you get _murdered_ and then brought back to life by some fucking monsters that I stopped being able to keep the lid on how fucking bad I've wanted --"

There's a terrible sort of passion in Henry, a burning honesty Frank doesn't always like. Henry doesn't lie well when it's not by omission, so generally he only says things he can get away with saying as absolute truth. 

When he says things he doesn't _want_ to have to say, his face gets hot and the line of his jaw gets harder, his eyes get wet like coughing these truths up hurts him, like it pisses him off to have to go so far as to voice them.

It's miserable to watch, and Frank feels his own frustration twist, tangle and snap.

"You think I woulda let you do anything I didn't want?" Frank bites out, watching Henry's mouth snap shut. The hot spots of red splotched over his cheeks haven't died down at all, but there's a sudden glint of doubt. "If either of us oughta be pissed, it's you. I figured whatever the Bloodstone was doing, it'd either get better on it's own after a while, or when I got back in the field it'd clear up on it's own. That's my fuck up, Henry, not yours."

It's hard to trust a lot of people, almost impossible to. Frank tends to shy away from trust, doesn't like the weakness of it, the willingness to rely on someone other than himself that comes with realizing someone is both level headed and smarter than him. He doesn't want to think about all the ways Henry reminds him of Lieberman that way, smart and even tempered and too goddamn good hearted for his own good.

He won't think about that. He won't do Henry that disservice. 

Henry's mouth opens and then shuts again, his eyes dropping. The tears built up against the lower lashes haven't fallen, but when he blinks Frank can see them drop, glistening even in the low light of their little room. Not crying, just reflex.

"The Bloodstone, huh?" He asks, hollow. He sounds disbelieving in a dull, dispassionate way, like he's too tired to give the idea the full measure of scorn it deserves. "You think the Stone did this?"

It occurs to Frank that he's taken a lot of this circumstance on assumption, which was never a proper way to deal with unknowns. He'd figured it would have been a given to Henry that something was making him act the way he'd been acting, some powerful outside force, and there was one very plain culprit consistently present anytime Frank was. 

He assumed, or hoped, that if Morbius offered his bizarre warning to Frank he would have offered something similar to Henry, since Henry was the one at risk.

He assumed, it's dawning on him now, that Henry's lust was a sudden, new issue, that it had to be obvious what was happening to him because he'd never thought of doing anything like that with Frank before.

Frank can't help noticing suddenly, though, that Henry hasn't moved to put any real distance between them. Since he's woken up, Henry had carefully moved to a less intimate position, and now was sitting fully up, but the bed was too small. They still touched, no matter where Henry moved in the bed. Shoulder to shoulder, or Henry's knee against Frank's thigh. 

Last night Henry had barely been willing to take his hands off Frank once they'd gotten on him, swaying and arching into Frank's touch like Frank invented orgasm and Henry was intent on buying up stock. It should have been at the least a little frightening, the improbable lack of refractory period and the desperation to get more of what Frank was offering, but it hadn't been.

This had been mishandled from the start, a series of bad calls and assumptions, but Henry still must take some base comfort in proximity to Frank, because even with the clear rise in irritation, he's not bolting.

Without really thinking, Frank shifts to put a hand on Henry's leg, offering something direct instead of incidental. There's things he doesn't think he could say regarding his feelings about what's happened between them, not for anything, but he thinks Henry understands some of the things that are said through chosen action and with selected silence.

"I know it's the Stone," he says flatly. He'd rather be flat, impossible to argue with, than kind in this. "Morbius told me it might have an unexpected reaction to humans. I figured we'd work it out and carry on, or when we could put some real distance in, it'd quit. Like I said, Henry, I'm the one who fucked up, not you."

It’s obvious enough, looking at Henry and watching the complicated fit of emotion curdle over his expression, that the kid either doesn’t or doesn’t want to believe it. There’s something that refuses to click here, and Frank knows he’s either got to dig the trouble out, or bury it enough for both of them to keep it from making further trouble.

What Frank’s best at with other people is burying. It’d be simple, to say the wrong thing, to turn this from something sincere into something half-mocking. Hurt Henry, just enough to make the topic permanently off limits. There’s an art to that kind of thing, and Frank’s gotten quite good at it.

And it’s what he should do. If he had any goddamn sense, it’s what he _would_ do. He can't take care of Henry, can't guarantee him any kind of long or decent life, and Frank's goddamn sick of seeing good men die on him. 

The issue is that Henry isn't jumping for the chance to put this on Frank, he's not looking for an out that absolves him of these last few days' weird, distressing behaviour. The issue is that Frank took Henry to bed and let the kid fuck himself stupid with a plastered-on bandaid excuse of it being for Henry's own health, trying to feed the fever to burn it out.

It's always so easy to rationalize his own enjoyment, and he's so goddamn compromised he'd kick his own ass if he could.

He likes Henry. He likes his fire and he likes that, in his heart, under all the punk bullshit, he's got such a good heart he's willing to pretend Frank is a good man too. He's smart and tenacious and morally above board, and all those things are traits Frank is happy to put to use for the purposes of his war, but Frank doesn't like Henry just for how useful he is.

"I didn't consider the idea that you would have wanted anything like this before," he says, just enough honesty to show willing. There's no point in giving voice to any of his own fretting and anxious suppositions. Frank's not known for being a man of indecision or deep thought, and he'd rather not have that reputation develop now. "I figured it was bad enough to have something compelling you to it in the first place, and especially so when I'm..."

He can feel his face try to do something to express the emotion he feels when he gives any real thought to what he's become, a corpse stitched into some junkyard machine. It's hard to emote with the raw lines of stitching and a face that's more dead than alive, though, so he has no idea how successful that is.

Better to move on. 

Closing his hand on Henry's leg, he expects to feel Henry flinch away. Maybe, he doesn't hope but still considers, there'd still be some of that eager easiness in him when Frank pushed against his skin. 

There's neither, not that Frank can really discern. Henry just sits there, staring at the bed.

"I didn't want to run you off. I figured this had to be shitty enough on you, without getting close and personal with me like this when you didn’t have any interest before.” 

Frank hates doing this kind of shit. Talking things through, making his own jumble of messy thoughts something he can actually talk about. It’s easier to shut this kind of thing down from the get go, not let anyone close enough to make the struggle seem like a worthwhile option, and yet here he is again. Even death isn’t enough to smarten him up from this kind of mistake.

So fucking compromised.

“You were interested, though,” he makes himself say. Clarify that he gets it, not ask. It would just be patronizing, at this point, for him to ask, and Henry deserves better than that. "I didn't know. I figured anything I did, any interest I showed, would make it all the worse when your head cleared, because it was purely the Stone’s influence that you wanted any part of me that way at all. And I didn't want shit to get any more fucked up than it already was."

Henry's a smart guy, and expressive. Frank can see wheels turning, but he can tell by the way Henry's expression twists that whatever it is he's thinking -- whatever he's _feeling_ \-- it's not in the comforted direction Frank was hoping for. Looks to be a shade more in the 'pissed off' direction.

"What, are we back on Uncle Groovy's Flower Power Bullshit Hour or whatever the fuck you called it?" Henry snaps. He's finally looking at Frank again, his eyes bright and hurt, cheeks burning red. Frank winces internally, but of course, his face barely moves again, giving him nothing but a blink in the face of Henry's continued upset. 

And Henry is upset, setting there fully naked and face burning. There's bruises blooming all over him, his arms, his ribs, his hips, everywhere Frank's clumsy hands gripped a shade too tight last night, but Henry doesn't seem bothered by those at all. For all his clear distress, he's also made no more to shove Frank's hand off his leg or put some distance between them; he's still sitting close enough for his knee to dig into Frank's thigh, no interest shown in ordering Frank out of his space or getting himself dressed.

"You expect me to believe you give a shit about keeping _me_ around," he demands. He's much more articulate than he's been since the day Frank woke up in these rooms they'd been given. Head's together, but still sticking physically close to Frank, and that's the part that seems to be tripping Frank up. "You expect me to buy that? That you suddenly give a _shit_ about where I go? You were ready to throw me out the second you found out my last name, you don't give a _shit_ about keeping _me_ around, you just need someone to run the goddamn coms for you."

Well that at least explains some of it.

Explains it enough for Frank to work with it. Enough to see specifically where he's fucked up and how he might be able to fix it, if it's not spoiled too deep to save. 

For a second Frank imagines reaching out and grabbing Henry, taking one of those expressive hands in his own and dragging him in close. Twist his wrist against rotation, haul him in and pin him to Frank's chest, make it painful. Henry's not trying to run but he's still _fighting;_ Frank's speaking as honestly as he can, showing his heart in a rare display of trust, and Henry's throwing it in his face.

He's offering himself and being found wanted, and the part that really pisses him off isn't even Henry's fault -- it's the fact that Henry's perfectly _right_ to find him wanting. He's fucked this all up in so many ways it's impossible to count them all, and it would be so much easier to just cut it all off now, shoot it down to something violent and mean and then bury it before it gets a chance to really cause either of them damage.

Keeping the movement as smooth as he can -- a bit of a trick after staying so still for so long -- Frank lifts his hand and catches the hand Henry's been gesturing with, the one currently pointing at him. Henry could flinch that hand away, the movement is too clearly telegraphed for him not to see it, but he doesn't.

"You're too goddamn smart to actually believe that shit, Henry," Frank says. It's easier to remain calm, to keep this from going ugly, than he would have expected. He knows his rage is still right there -- he's tapped into it plenty since Morbius brought him back -- but it's not right there at the surface now, it's not demanding to show. "Yeah, I was goddamn pissed about you keeping that from me. How d'you think it looked, you showing up willing to help but hiding that particular bit of info?"

Henry's eyes on Frank's hand, the way it engulfs his, then blink and he's looking at Frank, hurt and puzzled and haltingly angry, like he's struggling to keep that fire in him lit, now. Like he wants to believe the things Frank's saying, or at least implying, but he's also waiting for pain.

"I didn't react well. That's a fuckin' understatement, and so's sayin' you deserved better." He holds Henry's hand in his own very carefully. It would be easy to crush it, to snap bones or break Henry's wrist, his arm. That's what Frank's good at, that's what Frank was, very literally now, _built_ to do. 

Violence is easy. Tenderness feels like running razors over his tongue, choking on things he shouldn't have to say. They're either irrelevant or they're things that anyone who spends any time with him should be able to piece together on their own without his needing to voice them. 

The way Henry's round eyes keep flicking to look at where Frank's fingers close around his hand, he knows that score well enough. Is it that he expects violence from Frank specifically, or just anyone bigger than him who gets angry? Don't need any kind of degree to read the kind of deep-rooted trauma issues the kid's working with, and that's just one more fucked up part of this to top the rest.

Finally, Henry exhales this thin laugh, shaking his head as he closes his eyes for a minute. It’s impossible for Frank to tell if Henry’s laughing at Frank’s attempt to fix this, or at himself (and if so, for what). Some of that overstrung tension works out of him with that laugh though, and Frank isn’t good enough at lying to himself anymore to really hope for much at the best of time, but there is something in him that focuses on that slow relaxing of Henry’s body, fixates on it in anticipation.

“I can’t… actually believe that, you know?” Henry says, venom drawn from the words by his own bemusement. “I don’t think I can believe anything you say because I know you’ll say whatever you think justifies the ends of getting me to stay. And the really shitty part is, I want _so badly_ to believe you right now.”

It’s strange, to find himself proud of the kid, even when it feels like something is slowly being crushed in his chest at those words. It’s strange to be able to emotionally respond to something while his pulse remains a slow and steady thirty beats per minute, well below where it should be. To meet Henry’s direct, aching-hearted gaze and feel no reaction but the startlingly clear emotional one; to see Henry’s pain and only feel an emotional echo of it, bleeding into the shame of having caused it in the first place.

“You need me to stay so you’ll say whatever you know I need to hear to make me, cuz it doesn’t matter to you, does it?” Henry carries on, voice woodenly stiff now, forcibly even to carry him through what he needs to say. Frank’s proud, yes, proud to see Henry holding his own, but he wants to shut him up nonetheless. “You need me now, so you’ll put up with whatever you have to so I stay useful, for your _war,_ and if I’m stupid enough to have fallen in love with you then so much the easier. And when you don’t need me, you can just shut me out again, or kick me out entirely.”

Another of those hollow, hurt laughs, and Frank knows now he should really say something, he should shut Henry up before he goes any further, but it seems that once again things have gone rather a lot farther than he'd thought to let them and now he's scrambling to keep up. His brain seems to be catching on just three words -- _fallen in love_ \-- and hitching there, repeating it over and over like he can't find the meaning in them.

Maybe it's more that he doesn't want to. 

Henry's not looking at him anymore. With his head angled down and to one side, Frank can't be entirely certain, but the bitterness in his voice suggests he's come to tears again. "Or maybe you'll just kill me, that seems to be your thing. Root and branch, right?"

Finally Henry tries to pull away. If Frank were a smart man, if Frank were a _good_ man, he'd let him go. The things Henry's saying don't cut because they're lies or because Henry's misunderstood him much at all. If Frank had any decency he'd let Henry go and maybe Henry would really _go,_ really leave. God knows no one would stop him if Frank didn't.

But Frank's not a good man, and no one will ever accuse him of being smart. He holds Henry's wrist just tight enough that Henry can't pull away, and waits for Henry to go still again before he speaks.

Once Henry is looking at him again -- and he is crying, that silent way of just letting tears well up and drop down his cheek that he has, that Frank shouldn't know so well to see as a habit because he shouldn't be paying that much attention -- Frank loosens his grip. 

"I told you you're nothing like your dad," he says, another blade slicing at his tongue. I"meant it. You're a better man than most I've known, and you're _nothing_ like your old man. You're decent, a good person. _That’s_ why I want to keep you around. I need a good man in my corner."

The look he gets as Henry gently extracts his wrist from Frank's hand is hard to parse. Hopeful and hopeless. Grateful and agonized. Frank doesn't often find himself the one who wants to look away first, but that's a damn hard look to meet evenly. 

And then, astoundingly, Henry moves closer. Frank's so ready for Henry to pull away that he actually thinks Henry's going to slip backwards off the bed and bolt, but Henry gets up on his knees and comes _closer._ He climbs into Frank's lap, his motions every bit as carefully telegraphed as Frank's had been reaching to take his hand.

"Really is the worst part of this whole mess," Henry says, arms sliding around Frank's shoulders, "that I still _want_ to believe it's all real. I want you to actually give a shit, and there's no way to ever really know. There's no way to prove it."

The way Henry touches him now is so different from how he'd touched him last night. He's so carefully controlled, and so _in_ control. Frank isn't taming something desperate and wild now, not trying to wear out a desire so violent it seemed liable to hurt Henry. If the Stone is still fucking with Henry's mind, its method has changed. 

Henry kisses him and Frank carefully puts a hand on his back, stabilizing him where he's kneeling. Maybe he can't prove himself in any real way here, but he's willing to try.

For this, he's willing to put in the work.


End file.
